Well, someone was going to say it

I’m in some considerable pain in wrist and head from the associated facepalm so all I’ll say about it is that I saw it over at Watts Up With That where Anthony Watts says:

I’m always amazed at the lack of historical perspective some people have related to natural disasters. It’s doubly amazing when reporters who work in newspapers, who have huge archive resources at their disposal, don’t even bother to look.

Before adding a few examples of the kind of historical perspective he’s thinking of. The only thing I’d add – and I owe a tip of the Akubra to someone since I saw it on a blog, but can’t remember where – is that if it was true that melting ice was triggering quakes wouldn’t it be affecting Scotland, Scandinavia and Iceland as well? Or did the big melt thousands of years ago take care of it, in which case why wouldn’t it have done likewise for North America?

Here’s an idea. We live on a big ball of rock which is prone to frequent (on a planetary scale) though mercifully small (also on a planetary scale) disasters, but because of our own sense of scales being many orders of magnitude smaller we have a tendency to go “what the fuck, that never used to happen, it must be us” every time something happens. Human arrogance is being blamed for disaster, when generally it’s really only culpable of causing the belief that humans even have the power to do so much.

Shit happens and sometimes it kills you. Accept it, and move on with your lives.